5 trendy cocktails for Valentine’s Day – The best mixologists in Rome offer you their drinks for the party dedicated to love.

The day of lovers is coming and many will celebrate in trendy clubs, or on the contrary, will organize intimate dinners where they will give their best to amaze the other one. What better then to start or end the evening with a good drink (always drinking responsibly) especially if created by some of the best and best known mixologists from Rome?

Our Carlo Dutto has selected for you 5 great recipes, all to be enjoyed in sweet company.

We just have to wish all lovers: Happy Valentine’s Day!

CHECK IMAGES HERE

THE RECIPES

DRINK: FAR FROM YOU

BARMAN: Mario Farulla, bar manager of the Baccano restaurant in Rome, entered 70th in the ranking of The World’s 50 Best Bars 2019

INGREDIENTS:

50 ml VII Hills Italian Dry Gin
50 ml Baccano Cordial *
5 ml Peychaud’s bitters

* for Baccano Cordial: vacuum cook 200 g of sugar, 200 ml of fresh squeezed lime, 1 sprig of thyme, 15 g of Jerusalem artichoke. Bake at 55 degrees for 2 hours, then filter.

Glass: low tumbler
Garnish: pistachio granola

PREPARATION:

Pour all the ingredients directly into the glass full of ice, fill with a few drops of bitter and garnish with pistachio granola.

INSPIRATION:

A drink dedicated to lovers, in particular to those who do a job that often takes them away from home, affections and love. Sipping this drink you will think back to your homeland, and it will make you feel less distant from your loved one, who patiently awaits your return. And so the ingredients become the Italian flag, home, thanks to the green of the pistachio granola, the red of Peychaud’s bitter and the white of the VII Hills Italian Dry Gin, with its seven spices, like the seven hills of Rome and its hints of chamomile, pomegranate, celery, artichoke, dog rose, juniper and blood orange. And who better than the Roman barman Mario Farulla to create such a drink? Important experiences in Rome and Dubai, then the return to his hometown to undertake the career of bar manager, at the Baccano Restaurant, in via delle Muratte, behind the famous Trevi Fountain. Hard work, research, an innate sense of hospitality and a unique and professional staff behind the counter, which has a fascinating bottle of over 600 pieces. Unique recipe to make this place frequented by tourists a true temple of quality of good drinking and feeling at home, always at ease. The large counter that stimulates the chat, the numerous ‘guests’ with the best bartenders in the world and an attention to the customer at the center of everything have allowed Baccano to enter the 70th place in the prestigious The World’s 50 Best Bars 2019, a result exceptional for Mario and his staff, for Rome, for Italy.

DRINK: SELFIE

BARTENDER: Valeria Bassetti, co-founder and partner of Drink-It

INGREDIENTS:

30 ml bourbon Jefferson’s Ocean Aged at Sea
10 ml organic cocoa liqueur
10 ml fresh raspberry syrup and chilli pepper
1 tablespoon of fresh and filtered lemon juice

PREPARATION:

Take a glass that makes us feel particularly beautiful, quickly pass it under cold water and put it in the freezer. Pour the ingredients in the order of the recipe into a shaker and mix gently with a long spoon. Taste, smile at yourself, taste again. Fill the shaker with ice cubes, close and shake vigorously thinking of any ex. Take the iced glass and pour slowly through a small tea strainer, decorate at the moment, sipping with the favorite lipstick previously applied voluptuously on the lips.

INSPIRATION:

Selfish and romantic drink. To love oneself first is to love better.

DRINK: TUSCULUM

BARMAN: Max La Rosa, owner and barman of the Divan Japonais in Frascati (Rome)

INGREDIENTS:

1/2 part Jefferson’s Rye Whiskey infused with porchetta *
3/4 part lemon juice.
1/2 part black pepper syrup and rosemary **
2 splashes of wine Lemon bitter ***

egg white to taste

1/2 Cesanese part of Lazio

* infusion of 250gr. of pork and 1 liter of whiskey for a lunar cycle at 8 degrees celsius, filter through a cloth strainer.

** infusion of 20gr. of fresh rosemary for about 30 minutes in 1 liter of water at 68 degrees celsius, filter and prepare the sugar syrup in a ratio of 1.5 / 1 adding 15gr. of ground black pepper.

*** cut 1/2 liter of Malvasia puntinata del Lazio wine and 1/2 liter of pure alcohol with 40gr. of untreated lemon peels for 28 days. at -18 degrees celsius and filter.

Glass: cup
Garnish: a sprig of fresh rosemary, ground black pepper and lemon peel

PREPARATION:

Use the dry shake and shake and strain techniques of the first 5 ingredients in a small cup. Complete with Cesanese red wine on the surface. Decorate with a sprig of fresh rosemary, ground black pepper and lemon peel. Always serve with Love: Salute!

INSPIRATION:

Talking about one’s feelings is never easy, talking about love is not even more, because it makes us very often vulnerable in the eyes of others and towards ourselves … Love is often beautiful and makes us do things wonderful and blatant, sometimes stupid or totally crazy! It commands our body with stupendous vibrations; it makes our hands do things we never expected … so it was for me again, giving life to Tusculum, the cocktail dedicated to the city of Frascati, in the province of Rome, where I decided to open my first owner’s bar: the Divan Japonais. A big bet, a “big madness” … but out of love for this city it went like this … the first kiss, the first loves and the first cocktail, I lived them right here! So again, the greatest feeling that is love, brought me back to the heart of the Castelli Romani. I could not devote a cocktail to this beautiful town and from here the Tusculum was born: a Whiskey Sour with the typical flavors of the area, reinterpreting a very simple cooking recipe like porchetta! It has always been important for me to insert our regional Italian cuisine in drinks in some way, trying to match the dishes to the blends I prepare, to give the cocktail a strong identity. It is a habit that comes from my mother Antonia, who, with her strength, taught me the art of cooking and the love with which it is created for others.

DRINK: RUSCIO DE MARE (Sound of the sea)

BARTENDER: Ilaria Bello, bartender of the Talea of Torvaianica (Rome)

INGREDIENTS:

5 cl of Don Papa rum
2.5 cl pink grapefruit juice
2.0 cl cretamo syrup
Wild fennel air

Glass: cocktail glass
Garnish: sprigs of wild fennel

PREPARATION:

Pour the pink grapefruit juice, the syrup and the Filipino Don Papa rum into a shaker, shake everything vigorously and pour, filtering in a very cold cup. Take some fennel air and place it on the drink and decorate with wild fennel sprigs.

INSPIRATION:

Legend has it that the cretamo plant was born from a spell of a fairy who transformed his man into this typical grass of the cliffs and his beautiful lover into a fish of the sea, so that the two could look at each other and never meet again. Ruscio de mare is a tribute to all those impossible loves, made of overwhelming passions, impetuous like the waves and echoing in our heads like the sound of the sea.

DRINK: FORMIDABLE LOVE

BARTENDER: Roberta Martino, co-founder of the ShakHer collective

INGREDIENTS:

1/2 Formidable Bitter Teaspoon
4.5 cl VII Hills Italian Dry Gin
4.5 cl Vermouth Cocchi After Theater
1/2 Apricot Brandy Giffard teaspoon
Cognac aroma Hine Rare V.S.O.P. Fine Champagne

Glass: elegance cup
Garnish: lemon peel and “message in a bottle”

PREPARATION:

With the stir and strain technique, pour all the ingredients except cognac into a previously cooled mixing glass and mix lovingly. Smear the already cold cup with an idea of cognac and flavor it with the essential oils of lemon before pouring the drink inside. Leave a love message on a ticket and accompany it to the drink.

INSPIRATION:

Valentine’s Day explodes in the notes of this drink that tells of the warm shades of spirit in its basic component of love, the sweet and luscious note of apricot, the indispensable spiced quote of vermouth, the dry released by the botanicals of VII Hills Italian Dry Gin and the fatal bitter counterpoint of Formidabile Amaro. The cognac Hine? The unexpected and elusive element, like the lover in the closet.